Working on Cars

This is a brake rotor after some autocross runs. The issue here is the brake pad isn't pressing down uniformly on the rotor, causing that rough surface on the rotor. The fix was to adjust the position of the brake pads to help get more even contact.

These are the brake pads. They are uneven, so they are pressing unevenly on the rotor.

My dad and I cut this pattern into a used brake pad to cut out the pad material and use just the backing of it as a spacer.

Here the backing the old pad is pushing the good brake pad out more to create uniform contact.

To maximize the amount of luggage that can be put in the car for my dad and I made some wood pieces to create a level surface with the trunk and where the back seats used to be. The following images go through the building process for that.

A lot could fit in the trunk with the planks in.

We took interior pieces out of the car to lighten the car. My dad used this car to drive on track and I used it for autocross.

I installed a roll bar in the car for safety. I spray painted it blue.

The door cards are out and we are taking sound deadening out .

We also took out the sunroof. This will cause a issue in the future…

These were the new door cards we installed. They are way lighter than the stock ones.

These were the original door cards we took out.

This is the sunroof we took out.

This is what the interior looks like after we put in the roll bar, door cards, and seats.

Another angle of the interior.

I spent a little time helping out at a formula SAE car as a local university.

The aerodynamics division lead at the time of the FSAE team took me on a tour to the wind tunnel they use to test. I'm the one in the blue shirt marveling at the tunnel.

This is the tolerance of the propeller. There are a few centimeters between the propeller and the wall!

The engine temperature of my dad’s track car was getting a little too high. In response, we installed an oil cooler. Here, we are test fitting the oil cooler.

I designed a custom bracket for the oil cooler.

This is the view from the front of the car.

Here we are attaching the cables of the oil cooler to the oil filter housing to be able to run oil through the cooler radiator.

Here is a picture of the cables connected.

Oil would spew out of the cable fixtures so we reinforced the connections.

This was a test run of the oil cooler. We hadn’t put on the bumper yet.

On the first few runs of autocross, we would tape up the air vent since the oil wouldn’t heat up enough for the short autocross runs. The tape is blue on the passenger side of the bumper.

I spent a few days helping one of my dad’s friends swap a LS3 engine (same V8 engine as some corvettes) into a non-corvette car.

These are some cams my dad’s friend had laying around.

These are various car engine piece my dad’s friend had laying around.

The following picture are of the swap process.

Once the engine was in the car, the air intake would keep falling off. We fixed that by positioning it better and putting better hose clamps.

After we took out the original sunroof on my dad's car, we put a plug in its place.

Here we were putting a layer of foam before putting in the adhesive.

Since the air intake on my dad's car was near the front wheel well, a lot of water and dirt would be collected. This would cause the car to not be able to suck in air well, causing it to run poorly.

To fix this issue I cut out plastic container and fixed it as a guard to the air intake.

Since my dad's car has a quick release steering wheel, I 3-D printed a hook for it so that when it wasn't in use it would have a place to stay. I printed it in PETG to last in the varying temperatures of a car.

My dad got a beat-up Miata as a race car.

When he got it we did a checked its components to make sure everything looked good.

This is the interior of the Miata.

We put in weights for balancing the car and a fire extinguisher for safety.

There were a lot of things that would break on this car. For example, this tie-rod came loose.

This is a compression test for the engine.

A brake caliper was leaky so it needed to be replaced.

This is the miata at the track.

This is the weight distribution of the car.

When we got the car it had a lot of stickers. The interior was also track prepped (roll bar, track electronics, track seats).

This was cleaning the stickers off the car. A ton time and chemicals were put into taking all the stickers off.

This is the back seats with the roll bar.

This was the interior after we took out the roll bar and bucket seats.

I was putting the dash cam in and found wires out of the map lights.

Here I am taking out the back seats since they are ripped.

This was the first autocross wit the car. That dirtiness is from the brake pad since

The following pictures are some of the data-logging electronics I pulled out of the car.

This is the roll bar I pulled out of the car.

I took out the headlights to clear them.